Another Saturday off! This is what the rest of the world must feel like. Once again, I had plans which is why I had the weekend off in the first place.

J was invited to an awards gala at Sound Board inside the Motor City Casino in Detroit. We had the option of driving over ourselves, but we decided to go with a bigger group from work and take a party bus. We could have a few more drinks that way and could sleep on the way home.

We were really pushing getting to the event on time due to a couple of extra stops. There was a cocktail reception two hours prior to the event at 7:00. We walked in to the casino at 6:50. After finding a bathroom, J went to get food while I went to the bar to pay $7.50 for a Bud Light.

After the gala, the rest of the group wanted to stay and gamble. J and I are not gamblers. We figured we could play slots for a while, but not for the 2 1/2 hours the others wanted to stay. I didn’t eat at all at the gala and J only had a little bit of what was left out by the time we got there.

We walked back out of the casino floor and started walking towards the food court. We didn’t really know what was there other than a Little Caesars . That would have worked as hungry as we were, but there were other options.

The way we were dressed, we could have went to and fit in pretty well at Iridescence, but J wasn’t really all that hungry and we didn’t even know the place existed until I looked at the website after we got home.

The food court is pretty bland appearance wise and nothing really jumped out at us at first. We were going to stop into a place called Pit Stop, but kept walking just to see if there was anything else.

At the end of the hallway, we came to a place that looked like it would work. The other places didn’t really look like full service restaurants to us and I wanted to sit down, relax and just enjoy a meal with my beautiful wife.

The restaurant we chose was The Lodge Diner. They’re a 24-Hour operation that operates as a full service diner. There is, again, a pretty bland dining room…just not a lot of character….and a lunch counter like you would find in any typical diner.

We stood at the hostess station for a few minutes while the person we assumed would seat us was on the phone. She never really made eye contact or even acknowledged we were standing there. When she did finally get off the phone, she grabbed a couple menus and just said, “Follow me.” Didn’t even ask if it was just the two of us or what.

We were taken to a four top sort of out of the way which actually made me happy. The diner was pretty busy at 9:00 on a Saturday night and while I wasn’t expecting a completely silent restaurant, it was nice to sort of be in a corner and not in the middle of the loud dining room.

Our waitress passed by the table and said she’d be right there. She gave us enough time to decided on meals as well as drinks so we put everything in at once.

I had already overpaid (by a lot) for a couple of Budweiser’s and there was no craft beer anywhere in sight, so I stuck to Pepsi to drink. To eat, I was really, really leaning towards a monstrosity called “The Killer.” This plate is a bed of French Fries with a pound of pot roast, country gravy and two fried eggs. Seriously, tell me that doesn’t sound deliciously heart stopping. I didn’t know if I could eat that much food so I went with the bacon cheeseburger instead.

The half pound burger is topped with bacon and choice of cheese (I chose cheddar). I asked for the burger to be cooked medium and it came out with a perfect, juicy pink center. This burger was surprisingly good. Like, not casino food good, but down home diner good. I greedily ate the large sandwich and the battered fries that came with it. In the end, I was very happy I chose to go with the burger over the plate of heart attack.

J had only had a glass of wine at the gala we were at and she found some cocktails on the menu that really sounded good to her. She chose the Flaming Sunrise which is Captain Morgan, orange juice, and grenadine.

She wasn’t super hungry when we sat down and decided she was just going to order off the appetizer menu. Her choice was the nachos and this place of nachos was a lot more than an appetizer. It could have fed a small country.

The large plate of tortilla chips was topped with large, delicious chunks of taco meat and cheddar cheese. It comes with large bowls of sour cream, guacamole, and salsa. I loved that they put the three toppings on the side because I really don’t like sour cream or guac and can live without the salsa. Chips, cheese, and meat are awesome nachos as far as I’m concerned and I ended up eating probably just as much of the nachos as J did. We both found them very flavorful and very delicious. J ate less of the meat and more of the guac than I did, but even between the two of us, we didn’t come close to finishing off the plate.

Our bill was a little over $25 and there was more food on our table than we knew what to do with. The waitress offered up some to-go boxes, but we still had an hour and a half to kill before our ride headed back to Kalamazoo, so we passed and went back to the casino to play some penny slots hoping to eat up some time.

The Lodge Diner was kind of a surprise to me to find inside a casino. The food was really good and while the atmosphere left a lot to be desired, as long as you remember where you are, you’ll have no problem waddling back to the casino floor after filling up on some good, hearty food at The Lodge Diner.